


Inversion

by rosecake



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Biting, Captivity, F/F, Forced Orgasm, Hela Wins, Rough Sex, light gore, weapon kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-02 12:48:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20276167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosecake/pseuds/rosecake
Summary: The battle is over so quickly Brunnhilde barely has time to comprehend the loss.





	Inversion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thedevilchicken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/gifts).

The battle is over so quickly Brunnhilde barely has time to comprehend the loss. Her Valkyrie are the strongest warriors in the Nine Realms, hand chosen by the Allfather himself to protect his people and strike down his enemies. They are strong, and they are brave, and they fall like leaves in the face of Hela’s onslaught, bodies torn through by a thousand dark blades. Brunnhilde nearly falls just as quickly as the rest of them, but Eir steps in front of her, taking the blade that was meant for her.

And what does Eir’s sacrifice buy her? A few moments, precious seconds that Brunnhilde wastes flat on her back, dazed from the blast that nearly killed her.

Her lungs burn, her back is on fire, and mind rebels at the idea that so many of her sisters are dead. Still, she is a Valkyrie; her sword is gone, knocked from her hand, but she has other weapons, and she reaches for her knife. And then Hela is above her, the sharp edges of helmet gleaming in the dim light that seeps in through the cracks in the sky over her prison, her face twisted up in an ugly, triumphant grin.

“Oh, I see I missed one,” says Hela, raising her hand. Smoke appears, coalescing into a black spear that falls into her open palm. “Playing dead, are we? Like that’s going to save you.”

A blinding rage overtakes her and Brunnhilde draws her knife with as much speed as she can manage. Hela is quicker, though, and brings her spear down on Brunnhilde’s shoulder before she has the chance to strike. The spear goes straight through armor, muscle and bone as if there’s nothing there to resist it, only stoping when the tip strikes into the rock beneath her.

Brunnhilde tries to scream but there’s no air in her lungs, so it comes out as a pained gasp instead. The knife falls from her hand before she has the chance to use it. 

Hela crouches beside her, hand still on the shaft of the spear, close enough that Brunnhilde can see how well-satisfied the monster is with her pain.

“My father thought he could replace me, did he?” Hela looks around the battlefield, littered with bodies of fallen Valkyrie, their bright armor standing in sharp relief against the black rocks, and makes a disapproving noise. “I suppose he thought a hundred of you would be enough. He never did give me enough credit. He could have thrown a thousand children at me and you all would have died just as quickly.”

Pain has stolen Brunnhilde's voice, stopping her from spitting out out the curses she wants to. “You’re going to die,” she finally manages. Blood spills from her mouth, and she coughs.

Hela, unsurprisingly, doesn’t look intimidated. Why would she? Brunnhilde is spread out on the ground, her life leaking out of her. But there are others, back in Asgard. There’s still the Allfather himself. Brunnhilde and the Valkyrie won’t go unavenged.

“Oh, darling, don’t try to talk,” says Hela. She twists the spear and Brunnhilde screams for real this time, pain overwhelming her senses. Somewhere in the distance she can hear a wolf howling, but she can’t see it. Her vision is dimming around the edges and the only thing she can focus on is the spectre of death looming above her. “There’s nothing you could say now that could improve your situation any.”

She reaches down to pick Brunnhilde up, taking little care not to jostle the spear still piercing her shoulder, and Brunnhilde would try to claw the witch’s eyes out if only she could move her arms. Her whole body hurts as she coughs again, splattering blood across Hela’s pale face.

“Come, Valkyrie,” says Hela, smiling as she licks a drop of blood from the corner of her mouth. “Let’s go watch the Allfather burn.” 

—

Hela rides Fenris across the Rainbow Bridge, Brunnhilde’s body thrown over the wolf’s shoulders. She falls at some point during the battle and passes out, briefly coming around to the sound of people fighting and dying in the palace only to slip into unconsciousness again before she can make sense of anything. 

Later, she will be told that Odin lasted longer than the Valkyrie did, but that doesn’t mean much in the end. He’s still dead, and most of the palace along with him.

When Brunnhilde finally comes to enough to stay awake for more than a few moments she can still hear the sounds of violence ringing out through the halls. Blood has dried along her torso, and she tries to ignore it as best she can. She ignores everything that has happened, everything that will happen now that her sisters are gone, and tries to focus only on the spear though her shoulder. There’s no chance she can help anyone while it’s still inside her.

She takes the shaft in both hand, breaths deeply, and pushes it through. She grinds her teeth at first, and when she realizes that no one is going to hear her over the sound of the battle anyway she screams. Her lungs burn and the taste of blood fills her mouth but she keeps screaming, howling as loudly as she can, because at least it's a distraction from the white hot pain in her shoulder. It’s easier towards the end, when the shaft is slick with blood and the hole through her has already been worked open, and the last thing she hears before she passes out again is the sound of hitting the floor as it slips free of her. 

When she wakes again the battle is still going on, but the sounds are distant, and she can’t tell if time has passed or if she’s just lost some of her hearing. She tries to stand and fails, falling back to the floor as the sickening rush of blood in her head nearly makes her pass out again.

Her right arm is still numb and unresponsive, so she takes the bloody spear in her left and uses it as a crutch to stagger to her feet. Her hands slid along the shaft, and she realizes all of a sudden that it looks like almost like Gungnir, the Allfather’s spear, except all black. Some kind of shallow, brittle copy. The first few steps make her lightheaded and she stumbles, nearly falling, but she grows steadier as she gets used to being upright again.

She leaves bloody footprints in her wake as she follows the sound of slaughter through the palace. The dead lay left behind in the halls - some of them struck down by swords, some torn apart by teeth of Hela's great wolf, some smashed against the stone floors - and she knows that with her wound she will soon be joining them. Exhaustion already threatens to overwhelm her, but she fights it. She has no intention of lying down to die. Brunnhilde is a warrior, a Valkyrie, and she will either avenge her sisters or die trying.

_Die trying_ is the more likely option at this point, she realizes, but she isn’t going to let that stop her.

When she sees Hela she has her back to Brunnhilde, too centered on the carnage in front of her to pay any attention. Brunnhilde takes the spear in both hands, shifting her hold so that it’s a weapon again, not a crutch. She can cross the length of hall to Hela’s back without it supporting her. She can find the strength to drive it through the hag’s shriveled heart, even if it’s the last thing she’ll ever do.

She steps forward, praying for the energy to get one last burst of speed out of her legs, and throws the spear forward.

She throws it true, but the spear shatters into ash and smoke the second it touches Hela’s back. Hela smiles as she turns, waving a hand in Brunnhilde's direction, and somehow there’s enough force in a mere gesture to throw Brunnhilde back to the ground.

“That wasn’t very clever,” says Hela, holding up her hand, the same spear forming again in her grasp, dull black and spotlessly clean.

Brunnhilde expects to be struck down, braces for it, but Hela only spins the spear over her hand once before letting it dissolve again.

“Don’t worry, love, you’re too pretty to waste,” she says, leaning down and lifting Brunnhilde up by her collar, so high that the toes of her boots only barely scrape the ground. “You aren't going to die until I get tired of you.”

The edges of her helmet gleam brightly, burning as if they’re lit from within. It’s just a reflection of the fires burning behind them, though, and Brunnhilde knows the flames are only an illusion because Hela’s hands are so cold they hurt. 

Hela pulls her closer, kissing her, and the coldness of her mouth steals Brunnhilde’s breath from her lungs. It takes a moment before her senses come back to her, and then she opens her mouth in return, just enough to catch Hela’s lips in her teeth. She bites as hard as she can, so hard it makes her own jaw ache. The skin doesn’t break, despite her best attempts to draw blood, and Hela only sighs in contentment as Brunnhilde thrashes in her grasp.

“You can struggle all you want,” says Hela, “it won’t change anything.” 

—

Hela doesn’t so much heal her as simply refuse her the natural passage from life into death. Brunnhilde’s shoulder goes numb, no longer bleeding but certainly not whole, and the rest of her body follows.

The palace is in similar shape. It’s falling apart, Hela having destroyed whole sections of it in her rages, and even the halls left intact have deep cracks branching out in all directions in the masonry. And while it brings her no joy to see her home in ruins, she does take a grim satisfaction in knowing that Asgard refused to yield. Her people would rather break than bow down. Hela had expected them to fall to their knees, bowing and scraping in worship to their new queen, and they had denied her that victory. 

Most of them died for their pride, and nearly everyone else fled soon after. That’s why the place is falling apart - there are no carpenters or masons left to fix what was destroyed in the battle, or artists to paint bold new frescos of Hela’s victory. There are no warriors left alive in Asgard, and no cooks or maids or tailors either.

Her own armor is too shattered and stained to wear any longer, and the rooms she had once lived in with Eir are gone, reduced to rubble in Odin’s final fight. She's reduced to stealing a dress from a dead woman’s rooms. Her hand itches for a weapon, but anything Hela finds she takes. As if she doesn’t have infinite weapons of her own. As if Brunnhilde could ever hurt her with some borrowed knife.

Still, she takes the knife off a dead soldier’s body, and she keeps it safely tucked away in preparation for Hela’s return.

She waits in the courtyard for the colors of the Rainbow Bridge to appear. She can see the city, just as ragged and run down as the palace, but she has not ventured out into it. Hela wants her in the palace, and the weight of her power is oppressive, far heavier and constricting than any chains could ever be. So Brunnhilde waits in the prison she has been condemned to, feeling numb and cold and already dead in most ways.

The bridge shimmers into being, and she feels a sick rush of anticipation. Whenever she sees Hela she burns with rage, a dark and all-consuming hatred unlike anything she’s ever felt before. It’s not a pleasant thing to feel feel, but it is at least _something_, and that’s better than the emptiness.

Hela marches out in front, head held high, her body still glistening with the gore of her enemies. Her armies, all desiccated corpses dressed up in armor, follow after her carrying looted gold and gems and wine and all sorts of other trophies that Asgard has no use for anymore. At least there’s no people. Hela seems to have given up on trying to drag back any survivors. It's not surprising, when they never manage to live long. 

Or perhaps she's just stopped bothering to leave anyone alive. 

“Waiting up for me, Valkyrie?” asks Hela, her mood bright. She’s always joyful right after another slaughter. It’s not until later that the victory will start to ring hollow and her mood will turn, slipping into irritation and then a violent anger.

“Of course,” says Brunnhilde. It’s not as if she’s going to give Hela the pleasure of hunting her though the palace halls. “Was anyone happy to see you this time?”

Hela walks past her and Brunnhilde falls in behind her, following her to the throne room.

“Not particularly,” says Hela, and she sighs theatrically. “I make such reasonable demands, really, I don’t know why they always panic and refuse me. Do you think it’s the helmet? Do you think maybe it’s too much?”

“There are so many reasons to hate you I honestly don’t know where to start.”

“Careful,” says Hela, taking her seat on the throne, “that’s no way to talk to your Queen.”

“Why don’t you kill me too, then?” asks Brunnhilde. “I’m never going to bow down to you willingly.”

“It’s always good to have a witness,” says Hela. Her power fills the room, pressing down on her until the weight of it forces Brunnhilde to her knees. She gestures to the ceiling, to the uncovered frescos of her early victories with Odin above them. “It’s always nice to have someone around who can tell your story. And your willingness isn’t much of a priority now is it?”

Brunnhilde manages to keep her head up, but it’s difficult. “I don’t plan on writing ballads of your glorious conquest,” she says. “I’ve never been good with music or words. Although I’m sure with time I’ll be able to manage a limerick or two about what miserable bitch you—“

Hela backhands her across the face before she can finish, hard enough to make her neck crack.

“Such disrespect, Valkyrie,” she says, her voice low. “Didn’t you swear an oath to the throne?”

“It’s all the respect you deserve.”

Hela's helmet is off and her dark hair brushes against Brunnhilde’s arm as she reaches down and pulls Brunnhilde onto the throne with her. Brunnhilde tries to jerk her arm free but she can’t manage it. Hela’s holding onto her too tightly, her cold fingers digging into her flesh. She drags Brunnhilde into her lap so that Brunnhilde is sitting with her back to her, and throws an arm around her shoulders to hold Brunnhilde in place, arms pinned to her sides. She reaches forward and slides her free hand from Brunnhilde’s knee up her thigh, pulling her dress up as she goes.

“That’s so hurtful,” she says, her tone harsh and mocking as she digs her fingers into Brunnhilde’s thigh, forcing her legs apart. “After everything I’ve done for you.”

“Let me up,” says Brunnhilde, struggling, her face flush with rage. Hela’s never stopped before, no matter what tactic Brunnhilde’s taken - begging, pleading, cajoling. She might as well be honest about her anger.

“I’ll make you an offer,” says Hela. Her hand slides between Brunnhilde’s legs despite Brunnhilde’s best efforts to keep them tightly closed, and her fingers are shockingly cold against her folds. She gasps, speechless for a moment, and Hela laughs. “Yield to me willingly, and I’ll bring your sisters back.”

Brunnhilde has seen Hela’s warriors, has seen Hela animate the corpses of her fallen foes and loyal soldiers alike with her unnatural green fire. Even if she were weak enough to be tempted by the offer, she already knows that Hela can’t deliver on it. An animated corpse is still just a corpse.

“No.”

Hela sighs with exaggerated disappointment. “Such a shame,” she says, resting her chin on Brunnhilde’s head. She massages Brunnhilde’s cunt in long, languid strokes, until the chill of her hands makes Brunnhilde shudder involuntarily. “One of these days you’ll come to appreciate the leniency I’ve shown you.”

Brunnhilde sighs and goes slightly soft in Hela’s grasp as she reaches for her knife, tucked against the outside of her thigh. Hela mummers approvingly as Brunnhilde spread her legs for her, moaning as if she’s getting swept away in it, and her fingers close around the hilt.

She’s gotten a little too encouraging, apparently, because Hela stops her stroking and plunges her fingers deep into Brunnhilde’s cunt. She has to bite back a moan, a real one this time, and she waits for a moment as Hela fucks her open. She’s getting wet, she can feel it starting to seep out of her at the constant contact, and her hold on the knife tightens as anger seizes her.

Hela leans in closer, holding her tightly, her mouth brushing against the shell of Brunnhilde’s ear, and that’s when Brunnhilde lashes out.

She’s fast enough to escape Hela’s grasp, and the knife strikes directly against her breast. The blade tears through her suit and then glances off her skin as if it were a rock, leaving no mark behind. No weapon left in Asgard can so much as scratch her now.

“I do always enjoy watching you try,” says Hela. She grabs Brunnhilde’s wrist and Brunnhilde cries out in pain as she squeezes, tightening her fingers until Brunnhilde’s forced to drop the knife. Her other hand is still buried in Brunnhilde’s cunt, fingers moving inside her, pushing into her as Brunnhilde tries uselessly to escape her hold.

“Then again, if you like knives so much, who am I to deny you?” She grabs Brunnhilde by the shoulders again, tight enough that her breasts are pushed hard against Brunnhilde’s back. The light gleams against her slick fingers as she raises her hand out, and a black dagger forms in her open palm.

Panic coils in Brunnhilde’s stomach. Hela would never be so kind as to kill her, but there’s nothing else Brunnhilde would ever put past her. “Wait,” she says, trying to pull her legs together, but Hela’s thigh is in the way. “Stop it, I—“

“Hush,” says Hela, talking right over Brunnhilde’s refusals. She flips the dagger in her hand and presses the hilt of it to Brunnhilde’s core, pushing it against her clit. “You’ll like it." 

Brunnhilde goes very still, wary of being cut someplace crushingly sensitive. The knife is dark all over, and the hilt of it doesn’t look anything like leather but it does sort of feel like it, the surface of it firm but smooth where Hela’s pushing it against her. She bites down on the inside of her own cheek, strong enough to fill her mouth with blood, but the fleeting pain of it can’t distract from the growing pleasure between her legs.

“For all your complaining you always end up loving it, my darling Valkyrie,” she says. “You can pretend as much as you like, there’s no hiding it from me.”

Brunnhilde moans without meaning to, starting to feel warmth spread through her despite the cold of Hela’s body. Hela exhales in a huff, excited to see her squirm, and drives the hilt of the knife into Brunnhilde’s cunt up to the pommel. Brunnhilde’s wet enough that it slides in easily, quick enough that she doesn’t have a chance to react before its buried inside her.

“Fuck you,” she says, the anger in her voice undercut by how heavily she’s panting.

Hela only laughs and pulls it out again, slowly this time, and it’s worse going slowly because now Brunnhilde can feel every ridge in the leather drag across the walls her of her cunt as Hela fucks her with it. Her teeth are clenched together so tightly her jaw hurts, and she doesn’t know why she’s trying so hard to swallow down any noise or sign of pleasure. Her heart’s racing and she can feel the rapid beat of her pulse in her cunt, and she knows it isn’t going to be long before Hela manages to push her over the edge.

“Every time,” says Hela, "without fail. I told you you’d love it.”

When Brunnhilde finally comes it feels like another little piece of her dying. 

—

Hela leaves but never for very long. She always comes back, and sometimes Brunnhilde wishes she wouldn’t, that she’d find some distant land and enjoy torturing the people there so much that she’ll stay, but she knows that will never happen. Asgard is the source of Hela's power and she'll never leave it for long. And she is, after all, Asgard’s responsibility. It’s wouldn’t be right to wish her on another world. She’s fallen on too many already.

“Still pretending you aren’t happy to see me?” Hela’s smiling as she steps off the bridge. Her expression seems a little forced, but perhaps that’s just wishful thinking on Brunnhilde’s part. “I’m Queen of the Infinite Realms. Anyone else would be honored to be my consort.”

Hela’s alone this time. She hardly ever bothers brining anything back these days. She leaves, and she destroys, and then she comes back to her own ruined home.

“Every land you’ve set foot on you’ve left for dead behind you,” says Brunnhilde. “What kind of conquest is that? You’re the queen of nothing. What do you have to be proud of?”

It’s always hard to tell which insults Hela will laugh off and which will strike home, but this time her face contorts in anger and Brunnhilde knows she’s hit her mark. It’s something. A sword through Hela's heart would be better, but it’s still something.

Later, Hela makes Brunnhilde pay for it, but it doesn’t matter. She’s grown used to everything after untold ages of being alone with her - used to the anger, the violence, the sex. She still struggles, she still bites, and this time she almost convinces herself she’s left a mark.

—

For years - decades, maybe centuries, she lost all sense of time long ago - Brunnhilde has walked past the treasury that holds the Eternal Flame without going in. Hela’s influence lingers even when she’s gone, and along with it her control, but it’s grown weaker recently. Or maybe it’s that Brunnhilde has finally adjusted to her circumstances and can now think clearly. It’s hard to tell.

She climbs over the piles of rubble at the entrance and then steps around the junk littering the floor, walking towards the Flame in the center of the room.

She’s only seen it once before, when Hela brought her down to witness the waking of her old army. Back then the fire was bright enough to sting her eyes, hot enough to singe her skin even from a distance. Now, though, it looks no brighter than a candle. She raises her hand to it, so close her fingers touch the flame, and they’re barely even warm.

So much of Asgard was built on lies and exaggeration that in the end it’s not surprising that the Eternal Flame isn’t likely to last any longer than Asgard itself. It’s just a name. Nothing really lasts forever, even if sometimes her people’s long lives trick them into thinking so.

Nothing else in the treasury is of much interest to her. She turns to leave, but at the last second something golden catches her eye - it’s a knife, and she doesn’t know where it came from or why it’s in the treasury. But while every other weapon she’s seen recently has been dull and rusted, this knife has an edge sharp enough to draw a bead of blood when she runs her finger across it.

She tucks it under her skirt, smoothing the fabric down over It so that it won’t be noticeable at first. It doesn’t matter where it came from, it’s her knife now.

Hela isn’t expecting it. It’s been a while since Brunnhilde last bothered with a bladed weapon.

The knife isn’t enough to kill her. It’s not even enough to get her to stop for the night. But it is enough to draw blood, a thin, bright line of red across the pale skin of Hela’s cheek, and for the first time Brunnhilde’s satisfaction is real and lasting. It doesn’t dissolve into shame when she comes at Hela’s hands.

Hela smiles at her, smug as she licks her fingers clean, and Brunnhilde doesn’t care at all. She can see some kind of victory within her grasp now.

—

“Odin once told me I couldn’t let you escape your prison,” says Brunnhilde. “He said that if you ever reached Asgard you would be unstoppable.”

Hela’s eyes narrow as she takes in the golden spear Brunnhilde holds. She isn’t trying to hide away her weapons any more.

It took her ages of digging through the wreckage of that final battle, but eventually she’d found Odin’s spear Gungnir. It doesn’t have the strength that it once did - nothing in Asgard is as it once was - but there’s still enough power in it that her hand feels hot holding it. Hela tilts her head, and she looks up at Brunnhilde as if she’s really seeing her for the first time in a while.

“He was right,” she says. “Even a broken clock is right twice a day. I’m a force of nature here, inescapable and inevitable.”

It's been months since she last left the palace to seek out new worlds to ravish. Brunnhilde thinks she doesn’t have the strength for it anymore.

“Yes, he was right,” says Brunnhilde. And perhaps if he had explained himself better, or taken better care with his mistakes, her Valkyrie would not have been struck down so easily. Perhaps Asgard would still be the great realm it once was. Surely things would have gone differently if he hadn’t been so determined to hide his past. There’s no changing it now, though.

“So why are we doing this again?” asks Hela, gesturing toward Gungnir. She shifted her wrist, and then she's holding her own spear. “You've tried to stand against me a thousand times, and every time you’ve failed.”

“He said your power came from Asgard. But what’s left of Asgard now?”

Brunnhilde can see the tension in Hela’s body as she rises, stalking across the cracked floor of the throne room towards her. The spear feels solid in her hand, and she knows this is going to go differently than the last time she tried.

“Asgard will last forever,” she says. “It’s eternal. Unending.”

“Yes, I was taught the same thing growing up,” says Brunnhilde. “I just don’t believe it anymore.”

And Hela, who has been invincible for so long, doesn’t even move to defend herself as Brunnhilde drives the spear through her heart.

It's a strike meant to kill, not to wound, and blood pours out of her, thick and dark, but Hela stays on her feet. The spikes of her helm curl out from her scalp as she pulls the golden spear out of her and tosses it away.

It’s hard to kill something that’s already dead.

“You think you can destroy me?” She’s shouting in her anger, her voice so loud it reverberates off the stone walls of the room, all while blood seeps out of the corner of her mouth. “This place will live on forever! I will live forever!”

Brunnhilde thinks Asgard is dead. Hela, Goddess of Death, killed it long ago, and all that’s left is the decay and decomposition. The stone will crumble, the seas will dry up, and Hela will dissolve along with it. If she’s right, though, and she does live forever? Brunnhilde doesn’t care. She's done with her either way.

“Maybe so,” she says. “I hope you enjoy your new prison.”

She turns to leave, ready to take the Rainbow Bridge as far away from Hela as she can. It’s faded and dull, and it won’t get her far, but at least it won’t be difficult to break it behind her. Hela rains curses down on her and she ignores her. There’s nothing left for her here, and no better revenge than leaving Hela on her own. She could claw at her and cut her open and break her bones and Hela would find a way to enjoy it. But she won’t enjoy being alone again.

“Valkyrie!” screams Hela, and it occurs to her that Hela never knew her given name. Hela calls out to her, again and again, but she doesn’t follow her down the bridge.

And Brunnhilde doesn’t look back.


End file.
